Dervish Piety and Alevism in Late Medieval Anatolia

Episode 359

with Zeynep Oktay Uslu

hosted by Matthew Ghazarian and Işın Taylan

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In this episode, we explore the evolution of Abdal and Bektashi doctrine from the 14th to 17th centuries. The Abdals of Rum and the Bektashis were two dervish groups in Anatolia who by the 16th century would merge to become the Bektashi Sufi order. Many Bektashi beliefs and practices are also inter-connected with those of Alevi communities. By taking a closer look at Abdal and Bektashi poetry, we examine how poetry, fiction, and other aspects of dervish piety evolved into the core beliefs of contemporary Alevism in Turkey.

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Contributor Bios

	Zeynep Oktay Uslu holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Darmouth College and a PhD in Islamic Civilisation from Sorbonne University École Pratique des Hautes Etudes. She currently teaches at the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at Boğaziçi University. Her research interests include: The formation and historical evolution of Bektashism and Alevism, dervish piety, vernacularization, Islam in Anatolia and the Balkans in the Beglik and early Ottoman periods.
	Matthew Ghazarian is a Ph.D. Candidate in Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, African Studies. His research focuses on the intersections of natural disaster, humanitarianism, and sectarianism, in central and eastern Anatolia between 1839 and 1893.
	Işın Taylan is a PhD candidate in History at Yale University. Her research examines the Ottoman intellectuals’ production of geographical knowledge in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Credits

Episode No. 359
Release Date: 20 April 2018
Recording Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Audio editing by Matthew Ghazarian
Music: Katibim (Üsküdar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla
Images and bibliography courtesy of Zeynep Oktay Uslu

Images

Ḳayġusuz Abdāl, Dīvān, Ankara, Milli Kütüphane MS. Mil Yz A 7621 (dated 920/1514). The second oldest manuscript of Ḳayġusuz Abdāl’s works (only 13 years newer than the oldest), discovered by Zeynep Oktay Uslu. It includes over 400 previously unknown poems, thus bringing Ḳayġusuz’s total number of individual poems to around 530. The newly discovered poems include previously unknown doctrinal elements of Twelver Shi’ite origin.

Select Bibliography

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